by Ciro Bustos
I used to read late into the night if I had new books, and if I hadn’t I would re-read old ones. One of the books Ana María brought me was Operación Masacre by Rodolfo Walsh. It had made a huge impact on me when it first appeared a few years earlier, as it used a previously unknown technique for revealing the unspoken truth. It was a menacing foretaste of the role the Argentine military was to play in our future history, and marked the start of my disaffection with fiction – except for thrillers – and my growing taste for faction like that of Truman Capote. At any rate, it would not have passed the censor had it not been for Lieutenant Ortiz. After Ana María’s visit I did a strange thing; I read the same book three times. I began as soon as she left, finished three or four hours later, then re-read it into the small hours. At that point I started thumbing back through certain passages and ended up reading bits of it again until morning. Not every book had the same effect. We usually savoured our reading, like dessert, leaving the best until last.
At dusk on 21 December, the sound of a DC3’s engines announced an unscheduled aircraft, unusual given how difficult it was to land in Camiri, set as it is in a valley between the mountains, in the days when a pilot’s eyes were his landing instruments. But the state oil company often flouted the rules when they used their own runway further out of town. It was a hot, soporific night, and the same old Christmas profferings and predictions on the radio had made sleep even more enviable.
I heard the sound of the chain before the door was unlocked and knew the hands were unfamiliar, not our usual sergeant. It was still dark so I supposed it was the middle of the night and I had been woken up more by the surreptitious movement than by the sound. Sweating profusely, I began to get dressed. Either there were problems with the padlock or it seemed to take longer because of the urgency. By this time, I was beside the door. I could tell various people had come into the patio. I opened the curtain and realised the patio spotlights had been turned off. To my right, I heard a voice whispering to Debray and my immediate thought was that the Frenchman was leaving Camiri. But Debray seemed to be resisting, demanding authorization from his consulate. The whispering got louder. Suddenly, as if by magic, a face appeared at my peep-hole as Lieutenant Ortiz struggled with the lock and called: ‘Ciro, it’s me. Get ready, you’re leaving, you’re free!’ ‘At this time of night?’ I said sceptically. ‘Trust me. Pack a few things, the minimum’, he said.
After the heated arguments we had heard over the Fourth Division’s radio, it would have been easy to be sceptical, but my reaction was to trust the obviously delighted expression on the lieutenant’s face.
I started packing a few clothes, cigarettes, family photographs, and my radio – my link to the outside world. My books went into a hessian bag we used for shopping. And, despite the stifling heat, on top of the little pile waiting beside the door went Che’s jacket. The discussion was still going on next door and on one of the lieutenant’s trips back and forth between our cells, I asked him if I could say goodbye to León. Despite having received orders to the contrary, he put his fingers to his lips and opened León’s door. León was standing fully dressed in the middle of his cell, under the light, as if waiting. We hugged each other, visibly moved. The lieutenant told him to stay inside, that he would be back. I found the sense of urgency, of illegality, worrying. The Frenchman finally came out, led by a tall, strong, unfamiliar man wearing a bomber jacket who urged him to follow. He greeted me, demanded total silence and told us to walk in single file behind him. Outside the door to the cage, a couple of men with machine guns fell in behind us and we walked by flashlight to the Fourth Division commander’s office, alongside what had been our visiting room.
The office was large but dimly lit. Behind the desk was its current incumbent who stood facing us for a brief ceremony. On one side were Debray and me, to our left Lieutenant Ortiz and a civilian in charge who turned out to be Major Torrelio, and behind them armed guards. The commander, half dressed in military uniform and half in civvies, as if he had been dragged out of bed, introduced himself as ‘Commander of the Fourth Army Division in Camiri’. He informed us that ‘the Armed Forces, in the name of the Bolivian people whom it serves, have commuted the sentence of life imprisonment, are releasing you, and deporting you from the country. Major Torrelio, here, is in charge of the operation and all that remains for me to do is congratulate you and wish you a good journey.’ Hand outstretched, the commander stepped towards Debray who had not spoken a word during the whole proceedings. Debray bowed in some sort of acknowledgement but then seemed to back away without offering his hand. This did not seem to bother the commander who without flinching turned to me with the same gesture. I shook his hand. I said I was happy to meet him now without a wire mesh between us, and thanked him for the decent treatment we had received under his command. Turning to Major Torrelio, the commander said: ‘Major, the ex-prisoners are in your charge. Carry on!’
The head of the commando unit outlined what we were to do. He made it clear that this was a high-risk operation, that some people opposed this course of action, so we had to be careful. ‘We’ll go out into the street one by one, turn to the left, and walk separately about five metres apart, without stopping or looking back. When we get to the corner, turn left again. A jeep will be waiting with its doors open, get in as fast as you can. Walk normally in total silence. Let’s go!’
All of us except the divisional commander set off after Lieutenant Ortiz through the dimly lit garden. With a couple of men ahead of us, we went out into the street. We turned left as we had been told and walked along an uneven pavement. I could see no one on the corner opposite the Officers’ Club where a military policeman usually stood. There were no guards anywhere. We passed the windows of our former residence; the boards that used to cover them were gone.
In my mind, I said my fond farewells to a town I hardly knew. The street was dark, lonely and silent. The cinema stood out, a bulky mass among the flat, semi-colonial architecture on the block. With the windows and doors shut, it seemed impossible it could have made so much noise. I imagined I heard the din of the latest box-office hit: Breaking Waves, naturally re-named Breaking Balls.
On the corner I saw Tania’s jeep, recognizable by its clear grey metal bodywork, now the property of command headquarters. Lieutenant Ortiz put my sack of books and both our bags on the floor of the back seat. He sat in the driver’s seat with us behind him. Men armed to the teeth piled in on top of us. Major Torrelio, squeezed between the driver and another soldier, ordered: ‘If you see anything suspicious, shoot first and ask questions later!’
The overloaded jeep set off towards Choreti. When the asphalt ended, we took a road to the right, and disappeared into total darkness, pierced only by the jeep’s headlights. The road was quite bad but widened out into a curve as we approached a ravine which I did not recognize. The bridge was blocked by a small truck. The major called a halt and his commandos climbed out of the back. They were ordered to move the truck. ‘Throw it in the water if you have to’, shouted the major. In the headlights we saw them surround the truck while the occupants were trying to fix it. They pushed it off the bridge and sent it crashing down the hillside. The jeep continued, picking up the commandos as it passed them on the bridge. I made the only comment of the journey. ‘Great place for an ambush.’
The stages of the operation gradually became clear, starting with something Lieutenant Ortiz had said before leaving the cage, the major’s orders when we reached the airfield, and what he subsequently told us. The commandos had arrived in civilian clothes in a DC3 supposedly belonging to the state oil company YPFB. The flight was obviously unofficial. The commando unit was transferred secretly to Camiri in a YPFB truck, and its office in La Villa was also lent as an operations base. (The YPFB president was a general.) The commandos mixed with the locals in the late afternoon. They ate, then checked out the ‘activities’ of the local garrison’s officers who, after their usual dinner in the Officers’ Club, found their way to places of
‘entertainment’. At a previously arranged time, Major Torrelio arrived at the Fourth Division commander’s house with his orders from the president and the army. He was to be represented in the operation by his aide Lieutenant Ortiz, who every evening took the keys of the cage from the sergeant who locked up. That night Ortiz withdrew the guard. The headquarters of the military police, on the corner of the square opposite Fourth Division headquarters, was likewise taken over, to neutralise any possible opposition.
We arrived at the airstrip, a simple ribbon road of steamrollered gravel in the middle of open ground, with a little emergency hut on one side and a windsock on a mast opposite where the aircraft was standing. We got out, and as we were retrieving our bags Major Torrelio brought us up to date with the mission and the men who had been left behind to tie up loose ends. He said we were awaiting orders from Camiri but in the meantime the area had to be secured until the aircraft could take off in the dawn light. He posted guards at each corner of the airfield and made us get in the plane. The lieutenant said his goodbyes. It was a friendly farewell.
The plane was a troop transport that had not been modified since the Second World War. Inside the fuselage, under the windows, were metal benches moulded into the form of seats running from end to end on both sides of an aisle. We climbed the sloping central aisle nearly up to the cockpit and sat on either side. The aircraft was like an empty tin of sardines, no question of air hostesses. One of the pilots, who had come out of the hut when the jeep arrived and had helped us board, now offered us blankets and cushions, reminding us we would have quite a few hours to wait and it would be cold. ‘Try and get some sleep’, he said
When we were alone, Debray spoke for the first time since leaving the cage. ‘What do you think will happen now?’ he asked. ‘The order is to deport us, so I’m sure that’s what they’ll do’, I replied. ‘Where do you think they’ll take us?’ he pressed. ‘The only possible country in this [the DC3] is Chile. I don’t suppose they’ll hand us over to Onganía or Stroessner …’ ‘Where in Chile do you think?’ ‘Iquique or Antofagasta’, I said. ‘Iquique is nearer.’
Debray wrapped himself in the blanket. I did the same. We did not speak again. The runway in the narrow valley was surrounded by peaks which emerged covered in mist and vegetation as the day dawned. Piloting an aircraft there from memory could only be done by Bolivian pilots who, with their skill and knowledge of flying between the mountains and going up to land in La Paz, were capable of everything.
Unlike in the pampas, the mountains delay the arrival of the morning light. At about half past five, surrounded by this magnificent landscape, Major Torrelio came rushing out of the hut, followed by the two pilots. They got straight into the aircraft while Torrelio gathered his men around the plane for a final talk. He was the last to board. When the door was shut, he came along the aisle to the cockpit, greeting us like kids on a school trip. ‘Good morning. Good morning’, he said and, banging the inner door with the palm of this hand, shouted to the pilots ‘Off we go!’ He was no longing wearing a gun, but in uniform showing his rank. We seemed to be the only three passengers on board. Outside, doubling as ground crew, the commandos dragged a generator to the aircraft’s fuselage, and soon each of the engines began to cough, splutter and utter expletives, like anyone would at that time of the morning. The plane taxied to the end of the runway where, motors humming in unison, it began to vibrate in a last final effort. Fortunately, instead of exploding, the huge machine set off at speed, calming itself and our emotions with a wonderfully smooth take-off.
Avoiding the nearest peaks, dipping from side to side, we flew over houses that gradually turned into the low square settlement of Camiri. If you did not know exactly where you were, it would be hard to tell from the air. The only point of reference would be the plaza and the church. So, if that square of trees was the plaza, then that would be where … but we flew over leaving behind any chance of locating anything. But something did seem to be moving down there, perhaps clothes on a washing line?
During the flight over the mountainous desert and the majestic apparition of the Pacific Ocean, Major Torrelio and Debray struck up a conversation. The major tried to keep it cordial, but the Frenchman turned it into a diatribe, attacking the Bolivian Army, to which this officer – risking his own freedom by taking us to ours – belonged. The Frenchman refused to acknowledge that the Bolivian generals deserved any credit for this plan, apart from as marginal subordinates within a political arena where it had been conceived on a level of ‘human dignity and international power’, and not by lackeys. The arrogance of the first world, wiping out the most minimal and formal ethical obligation, was staggering to this representative of a humble South American country, who had taken the trouble to explain how the operation to save us was planned and had conceded the indifference of the majority of Bolivians to this solution to a situation created neither by the people nor the army. But nothing would curb the Frenchman’s furious, uncontrolled rant. It seemed as if Major Torrelio might eventually, and justifiably, lose his patience. But he did not. His kept his cool.
At the airport in Chile, groups of people were waiting expectantly. Others were running around, trying to get on to the runway; they were members of the press corps who had been tipped off about the arrival of the Bolivian aircraft and its cargo, and local authorities and representatives of the socialist president Salvador Allende, who barely three months earlier, in September 1970, had won the elections as the candidate for Popular Unity, a coalition of parties from social democratic to the extreme left.
We did in fact land in Iquique, a beautiful port city, practically the most northern point of Chile, spread out before the great ocean and cooled by a light sea breeze, with a whiff of shellfish and seaweed, and lulled by a background chorus of seagulls hovering over the beaches and landing on the rooftops. A century earlier, we would have landed in Antofagasta. Now, the aircraft taxied alongside the main airport building, amid roars and whistles, to finally come to rest in front of the crowd. I suddenly stepped out of the looking glass, back into real life. All attention was focused on Debray, of course, who was quickly surrounded by elegant young men with beards who would not allow journalists anywhere near him. They greeted him like a fully accredited ambassador and led him to a waiting car, which swept away with a convoy of vehicles in its wake. I, on other hand, was to be driven to the airport building by the police. But while I was still on the runway, a French journalist welcomed me in perfect Spanish. It was Philippe Gustin, director of Agence France Presse (AFP) and correspondent in Santiago. He said he had tried more than once to write an article about me in Camiri but could never get authorization. Now I was in Iquique, a free man, he would like to write an article, either today or tomorrow.
In Immigration I was asked to identify myself. I had asked Ana María to smuggle some documents into jail for me so I would have them if I needed them. I had left the Mendoza identity card Cholo had once got for me with Manuel in Buenos Aires, when I changed my identity on my way to Bolivia. Ana María had brought me my driver’s licence and it was that I now showed to the police. The Chileans did not want to accept the document but I had nothing else. Someone reminded them that I had just been a prisoner, not a tourist. A committee of local officials had been appointed to look after me and I remained in their care until all the customs formalities were finished.
The real surprise was waiting for me when I left the office. It was the ‘Englishman’ George Roth, our former compañero. He explained that neither the international nor the Santiago press had had the details of our escape; or rather they had not been informed in time and were misinformed afterwards. The news was managed at presidential level, naturally, and by the French Embassy who had passed it on to their own press agency for obvious reasons. Roth should have got a prize for determination because he had always assumed that the news would come out via the French. In fact Philippe Gustin, who had interviewed him in Camiri when he was released, had given it to him. Apart from Gustin
and himself, the only journalists at the airport were the local press and radio reporters who had been alerted by Bolivian radio.
It was a very pleasant reunion; I had found a familiar face and Roth was visibly moved. He had already realized there was a plan afoot to stitch me up. He was staying at the hotel where as it happened I was also being taken, so he more or less took charge of me. Being released after nearly four years is no easy experience. Your self-defence mechanism has been lowered and things happen at a dizzying pace, faster than your ability to crank up your sluggish psyche. However high your expectations, you still have to face the unknown. The mayor of Iquique was to honour us with a banquet. Roth went to buy me some clothes while I had my first proper bath in years, with perfumed soap and steaming hot water. My room was modest, but to me it seemed exotically luxurious. All I wanted to do was sleep but they came at midday to take me to lunch, by the sea, in the open air.
Long tables had been laid for about a hundred guests on the promenade, looking towards an infinite horizon. Debray was at the head of the centre table, I was on his left and the mayor, a young Socialist, was to his right facing me. The atmosphere was very friendly, and the meal washed down with some excellent Maipo wine. Debray was already behaving like a star, due not only to his upper-class roots but also his superior education. He soon withdrew from the table, escorted to a private meeting by members of the MIR (Revolutionary Left Movement).